At the end of September, Grégoire de Fournas left the National Assembly for a few days to oversee the harvest at his family estate in the Médoc. It was not planned, but now he can go down to prune the vines: the National Rally (RN) deputy was suspended for two weeks from the National Assembly, the day after his xenophobic exit – “Let him return to Africa!” – pronounced in the Hemicycle.
The political trajectory of this fine-framed colossus changed on these five words. Saturday November 5, in the event of a probable victory for Jordan Bardella in the race for the presidency of the RN, Grégoire de Fournas was preparing to get on the right wagon. Protege of Edwige Diaz, a rising value of the party that Mr. Bardella is preparing to appoint vice-president, the 37-year-old winegrower should have endorsed, according to Point et Current values, the function of spokesperson for the RN. Since the summer, he enjoyed stopping in front of the tense microphones. The party being in search of new profiles to bring out at the Palais-Bourbon, it should have been.
His fate, in the short term, will probably be different. Grégoire de Fournas, who did not respond to requests from the Monde, will have to be forgotten, starting from his own party, where tenors like David Rachline and Hélène Laporte, MP for Lot-et-Garonne, distanced themselves from his remarks on Friday. The boss of the party, Marine Le Pen, only just admitted a “lack of finesse”. Grégoire de Fournas has put a big damper on a return so far very profitable to Mme Le Pen, and which should have ended in apotheosis with the victory of Jordan Bardella, his protege, at the RN congress on Saturday. The winegrower disturbs both the congress and the notabilisation of the party.
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His multiple interventions during the session of questions to the government on Thursday November 3, before the one which was fatal to him, testify as much to a taste for invective as to his speed of adaptation to the atmosphere of the Hemicycle. In Gironde, where he occupied between 2015 and 2021 a post of departmental councilor, then the function of municipal opponent in Pauillac, since 2020, the incident hardly surprised. Neither in form nor in substance.
“He is known as someone who insults very easily, especially on human, social, solidarity, says the socialist Pascale Got, vice-president of the department and deputy for the constituency of Grégoire de Fournas between 2007 and 2017. He said things in a very vehement way. The idea of helping abroad, whether unaccompanied minors or economic projects in Eastern Europe or Africa, was incomprehensible to him. We lived for six years his anger, his harsh words, his intolerance to debate. »
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